


i love you as i'm lying through my teeth

by Cloudy



Category: Magic Kaito
Genre: Best Man in love with the groom, F/M, M/M, Marriage, Nothing but heartbreak tbh, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 00:48:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6032104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloudy/pseuds/Cloudy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My best wishes to you two. It's a privilege to know you, to be here, to give this speech, to see you two finally unified as you should be." Saguru toasted them, feeling hollow as ever.</p><p>In which Saguru is the best man at Aoko's and Kaito's long-awaited wedding, and he can't seem to stop dwelling on all the regret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i love you as i'm lying through my teeth

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration heavily drawn from Satisfied from Hamilton and Say Goodbye by Black Lab.

"It is truly an honor, to be the best man at such a beautiful wedding. For those who don't know me, I am Hakuba Saguru, Aoko-kun's and Kaito-kun's classmate and friend."

 _Honor, indeed._ A bloody torment is what it was. But then, Saguru had always been good at putting up a front. He'd been putting up this particular one for years, so it was nearly second nature. Accepting this role hadn't been easy, though. He remembered so vividly, Kaito's words, his invitation, his (almost reluctant) request.

_I need a best man._

Saguru remembered the control it required to not choke on his tea, to not show his dismay even briefly, because Kaito was smart, smart enough to catch any "off" behavior, and certainly perceptive enough to catch even the slightest displeasure, the slightest glimpse of reluctance or upset. And he had swallowed the pain clawing up his throat, and hidden his temporary inability to breathe, and cocked an eyebrow and expressed wryly amused interest.

He continued his speech in a manner that might have been robotic if his voice weren't infused with all his carefully-practiced emotion and poise.

"I first met the two of them when I transferred into class 2B of Ekoda High, all of five years ago."

He'd met Kaito before then, though. Or at least one of Kaito's many masks (even when he'd first met him as Kuroba Kaito, that had only been a mask. It had been much later that he'd truly met him). It had been Saguru's first heist, and KID had baffled him and excited him. A fairly harmless thief, going to great lengths to avoid getting caught, even if it meant potentially causing harm to himself, was far from the criminals Saguru normally chased. It was refreshing and alarming and confusing beyond belief, and he had just wanted to understand. He'd been so taken in by that urge, and by the KID's wit, his banter. He'd been intrigued and enchanted and he should have caught himself but he didn't.

More hollow words fell from his tongue, anecdotes about their class disruptions and their playful behavior, about the way so many people in the class had placed bets on how long it would take for the two to realize they loved each other and were loved back. "What a wonderful feeling that must have been," he heard himself say, "to have that realization together." A gentle, closed-mouth smile softened his expression appropriately as he nodded toward them, looking so happy, just as absorbed in each other as they were in the speech.

At least Kaito is happy. At least both of them are happy. That makes it worth it. This is worth it.

Saguru's always had a talent for lying to himself.

Meeting Kuroba had been almost as much of a rush as meeting KID, which was appropriate. Even when he didn't know Kaito was KID, the realization that the other was _clever_ and _enigmatic_ had drawn him in. People like that are good at drawing others in. He got entangled in the intrigue and the need to make sense of him just as he had with KID, and realizing the two were one in the same only made his emotional and intellectual entrapment worse.

Saguru, obsessed with keeping count (of seconds, of beats and notes in a song, of anything with repetition and pattern), had lost track of the amount of times he'd scolded himself for his interest. He'd noticed himself becoming over-interested, over-involved, and how many times had he recognized that, pulled himself back from the precipice of falling, only to be drawn back again?

How many times had he overanalyzed Kaito's actions, as himself or as KID? How often had he picked apart every little puzzle he'd handed him in class, every riddle he'd delivered, every time he came just a little closer than Saguru expected? Too often.

The precipice tempted him more than he'd ever understood until he was airborne.

"I'm lucky, to have watched the romance between them develop, and to have been their friend through it."

He couldn't feel the truthfulness of it, but it wasn't a complete lie, either. It had been good to have friends. It had. It had been good to meet genuine Nakamori Aoko and witty Kuroba Kaito. Aoko was just so _much_ in everything she did, and overwhelming in a wonderful sort of way, and Kaito had been so frustrating but _so tempting_. Even when he and Kaito were so often arguing, clashing, disagreeing, he'd been so welcomed into their circle, so easily included. Saguru, who had never really been able to get along with peers in the classroom in all his life, was accepted into a group without question. Even when he'd first started observing them, he'd known--known as everybody else had known, that it would only be a matter of time before Aoko and Kaito realized their feelings.

And yet, he'd been so bad at reminding himself of that.

Saguru had never been one to pine before Kuroba Kaito came along. Really, it was never a thing he'd needed to struggle with before. Saguru kept all his emotions guarded, subdued them, never let them rule his mind or his actions. When he was wrapped up in an emotion, weighed down by it, he had a great talent for extricating himself from it before things got too severe (usually). Then he'd just fold the emotion away, smooth it over with heavy, solid logic. It wasn't the healthiest way to handle one's own emotions, but it worked.

It was supposed to work.

And really, Saguru hadn't caught himself pining much for the first while, which was shockingly poor observation on his part. He'd vastly underestimated just how invested he was in Kaito.

It was only when Kaito and Aoko had started dating that he'd noticed. That he'd realized just how often he searched for hidden meaning in what Kaito did beyond simply trying to understand his overall motive. That he'd caught himself taking Kaito in so subtly that it had even gone without his own noticing.

Before the start of that relationship, Saguru hadn't even understood the magnitude of his own attraction. He'd hidden it, even from himself. He'd thought it was ignorable, as all his little attractions in the past had been. Kaito was fascinating and made his mind and heart race. He matched wits with him the way nobody else had. In every conversation they had, Kaito matched him step for step, like a dance where neither could decide quite who was leading, but carried on gracefully just the same. Everything about Kaito was a struggle, and yet so easy. He was full of contradictions.

And yet, for all of Saguru's observational capacities, for all his ability of catching patterns early and understanding so many situations with the ease of instinct, he couldn't for the life of him see how heavily Kaito was impacting him until the day Ekoda High erupted because the childhood friends had finally met their inevitable fate of _high school sweethearts_.

"Kaito," _I love you, I'm sorry, I love you, and I loathe myself for my inability to cease my selfishness._  "You are so fortunate, to have her. To have somebody who knows you as she does." And it should not hurt so much to admit that. Of course Aoko knows Kaito inside out. They'd known each other their whole lives. He'd known Kaito for _five years._

 _But I still know him just as well,_ his mind argued, almost vicious.

"I cannot imagine having someone know me so intimately, especially someone genuine as your wife, so very truly _herself_ , and absolutely open when it comes to those she cares about." He swallowed, cleared his throat to hide the creeping of an emotion other than congratulatory. Impossibly indigo eyes were locked on his, and he was going to drown in them if he stared into them any longer. Look to Aoko instead, rail against the resentment that flared up upon looking at her, happy and bright and so completely untouched by his carefully hidden tempest.

"And Aoko, you have someone so--" _unique full of life full of love and care for the world so kind so overwhelmingly good and on top of all that clever and perfectly imperfect_ "--unmistakably enamored with you, and dedicated to you, despite how mutable he might be otherwise. You and I, we both know how impossible Kaito can be, and how unpredictable. But we also both know how loyal he is to those he loves."

Saguru was so sickened by his own bitter indignation. What right did he have to be upset? It wasn't as if he'd ever acted on the feelings. It wasn't as if he had ever expected anything from Kaito. He was so unjustified in everything he felt, and it disgusted him. He'd never taken the chance, he'd never tried to see if he might have been accepted or rejected. Who was he to feel such petty feelings as abandonment or bitterness over his situation, when two people who mattered to him were so happy?

In behavioral psychology, there are the concepts of extrinsic and intrinsic attitudes. Respectively, one is the logical, conscious attitude someone has toward a situation, while the other is the instinctive, purely emotional attitude. Saguru's extrinsic attitude toward Kaito's and Aoko's relationship, and this marriage, was happiness for his friends, enthusiasm for a fulfiling, happy union. But his intrinsic attitude was a feeling of loss, the feeling that something he'd never had was being stolen from him, and this disgusting resentment.

Fortunately, the extrinsic attitude held just enough sway to keep him quiet about the intrinsic attitude.

"My best wishes to you two. It's a privilege to know you, to be here, to give this speech, to see you two finally unified as you should be." Saguru toasted them, feeling hollow as ever. He could hardly register the applause as he took his seat. His chest was too tight, and he wished he could leave the reception without making a scene.


End file.
